Oracle 19c - Automation and Manageability Enhancements

Introduction
DBAs should always aim to automate their tasks and avoid as much as possible manual repetitive tasks. This was always true; however, not always implemented; now with the new DevOps era, I see more and more Database teams who have been "hit" by the DevOps trend which demands more automation and collaboration in order to accelerate application updates & delivery

DBCA Silent Mode 
One of the common and popular ways to achieve automation when it comes to installation, configuration, and patching, is to leverage Oracle DBCA (Database Configuration Assistant) tool with the silent mode which is basically and alternative to the regular "GUI" mode DBCA.
When using silent mode, customers can run scripts that will handle a require operation without manual process which requires the "traditional" GUI mode.

Oracle 19c - Automation and Manageability Enhancements

The recent Oracle 19c release has introduced several interesting enhancements in the area of the DBCA silent mode. Now, the following operations can be used with the Silent mode:

• Ability to Create a Duplicate of an Oracle Database Using DBCA in Silent Mode
• Ability to Create a PDB by Cloning a Remote PDB Using DBCA in Silent Mode
• Ability to Relocate a PDB to Another CDB Using DBCA in Silent Mode

How to resolve PRVF-0002: could not retrieve local node name

Introduction

In this short post I'd like to show you how to resolve error "PRVF-0002: could not retrieve local node name". When I started an Oracle 12.1.0.2 installation on Solaris x86-64 (Version [11.2] Description [SunOS 5.11]) I encountered the following error:

Solution

First, verify that the "hostname" command returns the host name:

isrvmsol07:ora[43] /oravl01/database> hostname

isrvmsol07

Afterwards check that /etc/hosts file, and if you find out that the hostname doesn't appear for the local IP address (127.0.0.1), add the following entry to the /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1       isrvmsol07

Re-execute the installation and then everything should work properly:

Conclusion

At the start of the installation Oracle performs healthcheck test for forward and reverse resolution of the host name so you can fix it by setting properly the DNS or maunally set the host IP address and name in the /etc/hosts file.

The new Oracle Edition - "Standard Edition 2" has been released!

The new Oracle Edition, Standard Edition 2 has been released (on September 1st) and is available for download as version 12.1.0.2 at: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.html

So far 12.1.0.2 was available only for the Enterprise Edition so with this new edition, customers who are using 12.1.0.1 with the Standard Edition, can finally upgrade to 12.1.0.2

This new edition will replace the Standard Edition and Standard Edition one, therefore 12.1.0.1 is the last version that offers the Standard Edition and Standard Edition One. Standard Edition 2 will cost exactly the same as Standard Edition (as per Oracle global price list, it costs 17,500$ per processor), therefore customers who are using Standard Edition One (as per Oracle global price list, it costs 5,800$ per processor) and would like to upgrade to Standard Edition 2, will need to pay an extra charge in order to benefit the advantages of Standard Edition 2 (such as using Real Application Clusters). For customers who are using 12.1.0.1 Standard Edition or Standard Edition One, the permier support is available until september 1st, 2016

Notes:

1. Standard Edition 2 is limited to 2 CPU sockets per system (Standard Edition was limited to 4)
2. RAC with Standard Edition 2 is limited to 2 nodes (1 CPU socket per node)
3. Standard Edition 2 is limited to 16 CPU threads per system (Standard Edition was unlimited)
4. RAC with Standard Edition 2 is limited to 8 CPU threads per node

Useful Links:

• Oracle Database Editions Page
• Oracle Standard Edition 2 Page
• Oracle Database Licensing Guidelines
• Oracle Global Price List

DBCA and DBUA are unable to start in Oracle 12.1.0.2 on IBM AIX

Problem Description:

Today I performed a new installation of Oracle 12.1.0.2 on IBM AIX 7.1 in a single instance environment. After a successful Oracle Software instllation I tried to execute "dbca" utility (Database Configuration Assistant) in order to create the database and I recevied the following error:

$ ./dbca
UnsatisfiedLinkError exception loading native library: njni12
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: njni12 (rtld: 0712-001 Symbol CreateIoCompletionPort was referenced
from module /oravl01/oracle/app/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/lib/libnjni12.so(), but a runtime definition
of the symbol was not found.
rtld: 0712-001 Symbol GetMultipleCompletionStatus was referenced
from module /oravl01/oracle/app/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/lib/libnjni12.so(), but a runtime definition
of the symbol was not found.
rtld: 0712-002 fatal error: exiting.)
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: oracle/net/common/NetGetEnv.get(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;
at oracle.net.config.Config.getNetDir(Unknown Source)
at oracle.net.config.Config.initConfig(Unknown Source)
at oracle.net.config.Config.<init>(Unknown Source)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.util.NetworkUtils.<init>(NetworkUtils.java:298)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.util.step.StepContext.<init>(StepContext.java:388)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.backend.Host.<init>(Host.java:1055)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.backend.Host.<init>(Host.java:1048)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.wizard.UIHost.<init>(UIHost.java:241)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.wizard.InteractiveHost.getInstance(InteractiveHost.java:78)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.Dbca.getHost(Dbca.java:208)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.Dbca.execute(Dbca.java:121)
at oracle.sysman.assistants.dbca.Dbca.main(Dbca.java:226)
$ smit aio
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Cannot convert string "-dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-l*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontSet
$

 After an investigation in MOS (My Oracle Support) I found the following article: 

AIX 12.1.0.2 Installation Fails with "rtld: 0712-001 Symbol CreateIoCompletionPort was referenced " (Doc ID 1949184.1)

What I found in the article is that this issue is a known issue for Oracle 12.1.0.2 in IBM AIX on POWER Systems (64-bit).

Solution:

The solution, as described in Doc ID 1949184.1 is actually a very simple one, all you need to do is enable to IOCP (I/O Completion Ports). The steps to do that are:

1.

Log in as root and run the following command:
# smitty iocp
Select Change / Show Characteristics of I/O Completion Ports.

2. 
Change configured state at system restart from Defined to Available.
Restart the machine

3.
Run the lsdev command to confirm the IOCP status is set to Available:

$ lsdev | grep iocp
iocp0 Available I/O Completion Ports

4.
Relink Oracle Home. In order to do that, connect with the Oracle software owner user and then:

1. Set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable
2. Execute $ORACLE_HOME/bin/relink all

5. 
That's it ! Now the "dbca" and "dbua" runs successfuly :)